Staying Strong
by the-speed-reader
Summary: She never really belonged. Not truly.


_Hello! So this is just a little insight into Skye's mind again - inspired by the same song that brought you guys my other fic, _**Pretending**.

_On other totally unrelated news, you guys are amazing. I mean seriously, I woke up the morning after posting_ **Comforting Nights **_and I screamed so loud my dog was shocked out of her sleep and she feel off the bed. Nineteen favorites overnight - ah!_

_This one's dedicated to everyone who's every fallen in love and cannot get seem to stop._

* * *

_But I hold on, I stay strong _

_Wondering if we still belong_

-Glee Cast, _Pretending_

* * *

She never really belonged. Not truly.

She was the girl picked from the back of a van with a bag over her heat and a steal hand around her wrists. She had never been one to stand down, to face the consequences of her actions; her motions were more _steal and run _and that was how it always had been. That was all she had known, growing up in a crowded orphanage where food was less seen than the rats that had littered the corners at night. Her first instinct was to flee, to never stay, to never fight. She had come to terms a long time ago that her only true weapon was a keyboard – and her first line of defense was sarcasm.

The others had grown up in fairly stable homes, as she's heard. Fitz had two loving parents who raised him right and sent him to a good college before he transferred to the academy; Simmons had been the only child of an older woman who had long since given up hope, but when her little girl was given she changed her life around. She had been loved and had earned a scholarship to one of the most prestigious schools in the country before changing her major to bio-chem and eventually moving into S.H.I.E.L.D.

Coulson and May were slightly different stories; they had never revealed where their origin stories had lied and probably never would. They were people who rose far above the human nature of emotions, sympathy, and empathy. They didn't particularly care for her stories of fantasy and flight – the pair had seen far too much of the world and knew the harsh realities of life.

Ward, however, was a different story.

He was the boy who had been mistreated, beaten by an older brother who had never really gotten a handle on his emotions. His parents had been gone before he was even six years old, having died in a plane crash that had killed ninety-six other people, leaving them in a foster home. His foster parents hadn't cared, and as it always did, cause and effect appeared; his younger brother was beaten to death and his older was sent to juvenile hall. He had been sent to an orphanage then, for fear he would turn out like his older brother.

He had sworn then that he wouldn't ever turn out like him – and for the most part he kept that side of him hidden. She had seen his actions, his sudden mood swings; the incident with his brother had left a scaring side of PTSD that he had never told her, and the only reason the story ever came out was because he had gotten beyond drunk one night and spilled his secrets to the only person on the plane at that time.

He understood her in a manner that wasn't recognizable to the others. They had both been mistreated and punished from the time they could finally make a move to understand the world. Her in multiple foster homes (though she now knew why she had been moved so much, for S.H.I.E.L.D had ordered her to never stay too long in one place) and him in the same, both of them never honestly grasped the concept of _kindness _and _love_. Instead was replaced by two different emotional traits in the both of them; her with sarcasm and him with an ever stoic stance.

So she didn't belong, not to the rest of the team.

But he and she were more alike than anyone realized. They were linked in a manner than only ever came from children that had no home, no love, no anything; they were lost, but had each turned to different places – him to operations academy and her to the Rising Tide.

Maybe, in a different life, they would have been on the same side when they were younger. Maybe they would have been friends, had lived next door to each other, and had attended the same school. Maybe they would've fallen in love in a time and place where fighting and war was not the answer to everything.

She wondered, often, if they could have belonged together; she had often dreamt at night of her in his arms, the perfect image of pure serenity. She tried to forget. It was useless, her mind told her. But her heart told her different.

And it would continue to – until the day she died.

She only knew how to stay strong, to pretend everything was all right. She knew how to cover her feelings so well that no one could tell how much it _hurt_.

She didn't know how to stop loving him.

* * *

_Ta dah!_


End file.
